We try hard to cure as many of our child cancer patients as we can.
You may have read elsewhere:
Q ‘What is our main aim ?’
A ‘To save the lives of children’
Q ‘What is our next aim?’
A ‘To save the lives of children’
Q ‘What is our next aim?’
A ‘To save the lives of children’
The screens at our child cancer conferences fill up with these words.
The audiences chant the answers; it can be a quite moving experience.
Another issue remains;
Q ‘What of those children we cannot save?’
A ‘To make their remaining life pain-free and dignified’
This also is very important, very frequent, and often very difficult in our
resource-limited situation in sub-Saharan Africa.
The aim is to do the best we can after all our first and second line treatments have failed. This is helping the child and the family when we know the child will die. This is Palliative Care.
Palliative Care (PC) as provided by the Cameroon Baptist Convention Health Board, (CBCHB) has only been in existence since 2005. It was started by a few dedicated nurses at CBCHB hospitals. The only drugs available at that time were paracetamol, anti-inflammatiries such as ibuprofen, and a poor ‘strong’ analgesic called pentazocine. The Palliative Care team now have morphine, both oral and injectable.
The PC colleagues travel daily to visit the homes of terminally sick children discharged from our wards. They generally start early in the morning, and frequently arrive home after dark. They are wonderfully committed and greatly appreciated by the families they visit.
They accept appropriate education from whichever visiting doctors they can. They attend workshops at which BTMAT Trustee Dr Paul Wharin and Professor Hesseling have provided input. They have reported on their work to the International Journal of Palliative Nursing (IJPN). They have had the benefit of the experience of Dr Catherine D’Souza and a group of her colleagues from the UK; new friends, and seriously dedicated doctors with an interest in PC.
At a recent Award ceremony held in London, our CBCHB PC team was shortlisted for a prize offered by IJPN. They were awarded a commendable second prize. Dr D’Souza and her friends received a donation from Professor Peter and Mrs Elizabeth Tavner, specifically for the development of PC insofar as it is aimed at our seriously sick cancer children.
The PC work forges ahead. We could not have envisaged it in the years before BTMAT came into being. BTMAT and the CBCHB will never now say ‘there is nothing more we can do for you’; we have a wonderful PC service, eager to learn, anxious to expand; committed to help incurable child patients and their families, to the end.
Peter McCormick